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Reading, Fast and Slow

Bibliographic Data

ID4376264
AuthorsKarin Kukkonen (0000-0001-5240-3280, University of Oslo, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume42
Issue2
Pages173-191
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePoetics Today (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/03335372-8883192
OpenAlexW3166393908
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited17

Reading literature is often contrasted to the use of digital media in terms of speed. While readers engage slowly with a book, they rush through digital environments at an ever faster pace. This article argues against a simple binary between slow/literary and fast/digital. This binary is in fact not native to the public debate about literature in the digital age but can be traced back from the digital revolution to modernist attitudes on literature, as they emerge in Viktor Shklovsky and Walter Benjamin. Drawing on results about reading speed in reading science and on current narrative theory, this article devises an alternative argument for literary reading as a process that unfolds over multiple time scales linked to different layers of meaning making. Reading literature, from this perspective, is not exclusively slow but, rather, works through a combination of both fast and slow processes. The article develops its argument through the example of Alexander Pushkin's classic novella "The Queen of Spades" and then applies this new theoretical account of multispeed literary reading to two novels engaging explicitly with the digital revolution

Argument (complex analysis · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential · Narrative · Novella · Pace · Perspective (graphical · Reading (process · Visual arts · Digital Media and Philosophy · History · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Philosophy · Scientific Research and Philosophical Inquiry

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    Wendy Hui Kyong Chun•Updating to Remain the Same•2016

  • Shallow Processing and Attention Capture in Written and Spoken Discourse

    Alison Sanford, Alison J S Sanford et al.•Discourse Processes•2006

  • Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida

    Elizabeth M Sheynzon, Robert J Chandler et al.•The Slavic and East European…•2006

  • Foregrounding, defamiliarization, and affect

    Open Access•David S Miall, Don Kuiken•Poetics•1994

  • Art, as Device

    Viktor Shklovsky, Alexandra Berlina•Poetics Today•2015

Unique citing works3
Citations per year0,75
Citation span2022 - 2025 (4)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 3

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